Well I think everyone pretty much agrees that Boston police look like idiots, and city officials are exacerbating it by defending the police's over-reaction. I heard the city's attorney general this morning say something along the lines of the Lite-Brite toys "clearly looking like bombs." Anyway, I saw something funny on the way into work today; a depiction of the cartoon character hanging from a bridge over 35W. Better call out the National Guard!
__Actually it would more funny if we were otherwise effectively dealing terrorism. Instead, we're wasting billions and billions (apologies to Carl Sagan) on a war in Iraq that's creating thousands of new terrorists, bumbling airport security measures, etc. In the meantime, while wasting said billions, effective countermeasures, such as airliner chaff and flare dispensers and others, are billed as "too expensive."
Cost: $1 million each, plus maintenance and operating costs of $365 per flight.
Cost of Iraq war, per hour: 7.4 million.
Cost to Boston to figure out the Lite-Brites were not bombs: over .5 million
Cost to New York City, Los Angeles, California, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia to figure this out: $0.
In Portland, police Sgt. Brian Schmautz said officers had no plans to remove any of the signs, so long as they weren't on municipal property. Nor had officers been dispatched in any kind of bomb scare related to the devices.
"At this point we wouldn't even begin an investigation, because there's no reason to believe a crime has occurred," Schmautz said.
In Boston, however, state, local and federal authorities on Wednesday shut down the Boston University and Longfellow bridges, and blocked maritime traffic from the Charles River into Boston Harbor. Bomb squads scrambled throughout the city and its suburbs, snarling traffic and mass transit in the city.
Coakley and Menino did not rule out the possibility of criminal charges, or a civil suit to recoup what they say is the hundreds of thousands of dollars the city spent to respond to the bomb scares.
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